


stranger paradise (rise up in smoke)

by loveortoxicradiation



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Demons, F/F, F/M, M/M, Meg Lives, Multi, Nephilim, Post-Season/Series 08 AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-12 03:43:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveortoxicradiation/pseuds/loveortoxicradiation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meg doesn't survive her run-in with Crowley. Six months later, she finds herself alive, decked out in a shiny new meatsuit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Breakfast Club

**Author's Note:**

> There is a minor crossover with the Sandman universe, and its spin-off, Lucifer. Knowledge of the series shouldn't be necessary.

Who knew! After a long, productive life of sinning and violence, the demon currently known as Meg was going to die, alone, bleeding out facedown on a dirt road to the sound of her former enemies hauling ass to escape. She knew that even the herself of two years ago would hate this creature she had become.

_See what absolute nothing your last great project amounted to_ , she’d say. _You couldn’t even stop the King. Being a little bit good killed you._

If she had a chance to talk to past!her, she’d try to explain. It wasn’t the good that killed her. Proximity to the Winchesters did her in. Everyone they met bought it in the end, often gruesomely. Someday, that poison of theirs might  kill Crowley as well. It’s the least they could do for her.

Scavengers would eat her flesh. She didn’t mind. It’s not like the body was hers. Still, she met Cas in this body, watched over him, became fond of the little tree-topper. She hoped Cas at least might—

She didn’t hope. She died.

-

It hurt like Hell. She would know.

Her breaths came short and fast through drowned lungs.  Her skin stitched too tight over bones misshapen and warped. If her vocal cords were fully formed, she might have gasped from the pain. It itched. It burned. A cloying smell, not so much floral as a cheap bottle of shampoo’s idea of what flowers might smell like, assaulted her nose, almost as terrible as her nerves telling her brain that her skin might burn right off. Something within the room around her kept buzzing, louder and louder, ear-splitting. For all she knew her ears actually were split. They felt bloody.

The noise was asking something. _Calm down, please._

Meg threw open her meatsuit’s eyes but they couldn’t see. In the Veil, the buzzing to her right cast off glaring, uncomfortable beams of light, pulsing like solar flares. An angel. Naturally. What else might there be in demon heaven than more annoying feathery bastards?

The light cut itself off. The buzzing ceased.

Scratching kept right on, though. Someone must have bound her in a devil’s trap. There went the option of animating her useless, immobile corpse with telekinesis.

Forget gasping from the pain. If she could speak, she’d curse fate. This was some bullshit (after-)afterlife.

Some time later, the door opened. The fact she could hear it bolstered her spirits. With difficulty, and aided more by gravity than she would have liked, Meg managed to turn her head enough to plop it to her right, facing the door. Rods and cones, synapsal bits and bobs alighted such that she could, this time, see the human covering the electromagnetic radiation field, someone’s frail little grandmother, a short, hobbly-kneed black woman with greyish blue hair and a daisy-print housedress. Her eyes stared off, at what looked like nothing--though watch she was doing some creepy angel thing, such as checking on the progress of the still-growing tissue inside of Meg’s body.

She wasn’t too far off. The angel warned her not to move, as her bones hadn’t finished calcifying. They could develop hairline fractures if she put too much pressure on them.

Raspy though her throat was, she managed to creak out that she’d survived worse than some mashed up bones, with some added commentary on how demons weren’t known for the care they took with meatsuits. Though, what could have easily become a tirade on the subject from her turned into a coughing fit. Turns out shiny new vocal cords can’t handle that much gab. The angel declined to comment.

The floorboards creaked as she shuffled away.

Meg watched the angel leave. Primarily, because she couldn’t move her head yet. Once she had her fill of peeping the door and the sliver of hallway she could see from her vantage point on the bed, she applied herself to moving her head back to its original position or, better yet, to move her body some. When the angel left, the room had been filled with a dappled light from the window. By the time Meg managed to shuffle her body near enough the wall to prop herself into a half-sitting position, it was night.

As suspected, a devil’s trap lay underneath the bed. An avocado rug stood against the wall, newly rolled. The sheets were pink, with cartoon characters on them. She was in some child’s bedroom, a former closet, judging by the size and lack of outlets. A dresser took up the wall across from the bed. Above it, someone had hung a hand mirror from a thumbtack. Stickers were attached to the wall at toddler eye-level.

Someone—presumably, her captor—changed her into scrubs. Unlike the blue ones from the psychiatric ward these were patterned, with sad, soulful-eyed puppies. She wished to burn them.

An odder change was that she no longer possessed the body of Rachel Choovanski from Sheboygan, WI. She didn’t remember anything after dying. The dark-skinned, chubby woman with a short torso and long limbs covering her smoke was a mystery to her; if this were an after-afterlife, she supposed it could have been someone she possessed, if her soul did the remembering for her.

She was torn between incredulity that she somehow survived her final run-in with Crowley and intense distaste, still incredulous, that this could be any variety of afterlife, even if what happened to demons after they died was a bit of a metaphysical conundrum. For the moment, simply to skip past the philosophy, she chose to believe this was her life/afterlife, as opposed to after-afterlife. She hated philosophy almost as much as poetry.

No human soul inside the meatsuit cried to be free. Perhaps she was possessing a coma patient. Though the silence was welcome, as she already had a headache, she would have appreciated someone to grill on where they might be. As this rate she might have to try gleaning information from her kidnapper.

Milliseconds after the thought crossed her mind, Meg caught the long shadow of Granny Angelsuit cutting into the room, illuminated by the hallway’s baker light. She stepped closer, careful; she stopped at the edge of the trap.

"What’s your name?" asked the crone-fetish angel. (She even had rollers in her hair!)

This time, Meg could control her muscles enough to raise her eyebrows and smirk. It felt too much like a victory for the demon’s liking.

"What," she drawled, "you didn’t catch it before drugging me and taking me home? The magazines were right! We do live in an age of self-absorption."

"None of those statements are true. Is this a demon thing?” The angel blinked slowly. “I know who you are, by the way. I was merely led to believe you might have changed your name since we last met. "

"My name’s Meg."

Though the angel claimed to know her, Meg struggled to place from where. She didn’t make a habit of socializing with them. Of course, the angel might have caught sight of her from across a battle, or some smaller skirmish, neither of which were situations the demon would have considered grounds for “meeting” but, if one took a philosophical view on it, she supposed those were the closest to social events for their kinds.

She really hated philosophy.

She decided to think the angel knew of her from her time with Yellow Eyes. If you played with the limits on that some, it covered her entire life. Lots of things she didn’t bother to remember happened.

The politeness worried her. She gave the angel credit for that. Never before had someone made her feel so unsafe simply from social graces. Angels and demons fought. At best, they made uneasy, quickly broken, alliances. Sure, there was Castiel, and Lucifer was friendly in his manipulations up until the point he had you jump off the bridge, but even they were exceptions, fallen.

She put it out of her mind. It would just distract her from the end goal of escaping this funhouse. And hey, the quicker she got away, the less she had to worry about weirdo angels!

Voice light, teasing, she asked, “Are you gonna tell me yours? ‘Cause otherwise you’ll be Daisy.”

"I’m Spera. We didn’t meet in a fight, if you were wondering. This is actually the first time I’ve been on Earth since before the Flood."

Meg flung herself sideways to rest her feet on the floor, ankles crossed. This ‘supine position underneath a soldier of the Lord’ thing was starting to bother her, dysfunctional meatsuit be damned. She rocked back and forth, building up the momentum to throw herself forward, to stand.

"Must be thinking of a different demon, then. Those were long before my days."

Spera watched her, head tilted, her eyes wide. By which Meg meant not so much the eyelids as literally the irises. They didn’t point anywhere near the same direction. It was as if the angel wanted to stare at two walls at once. That, or her more usual form didn’t have carnivore-set eyes.

Her momentum plan worked. Unfortunately, it flung her directly into the barrier set by the devil’s trap. She hissed against the sensation, took wobbly steps backwards.

"You were alive," said Spera, nodding in concession to some silent point. "As in, you were mortal. I see now how I implied we met when you were a demon. Apologies. My conversational skills are a little lacking from disuse."

"You knew my mortal self?" Hands on her hips, Meg rocked, still, rolling feet back and forth. She grinned. "Big changes, since then. Hope I haven’t disappointed."

"Fewer than you’d think. You’re wearing her now, for example."

"That’s impossible,” she said, an edge to her voice. “How do you dredge up a thousands year old corpse?”

Not that she didn’t know angels could bring back the dead—which Spera so helpfully, mildly pointed out—but what business did a daisy-print wearing, creepy, increasingly suspicious-ly polite angel have in doing so? For that matter, angel mojo or no, the mechanics of it still baffled Meg. If Cas couldn’t heal her wounds, how could a different angel bring her back from death? She couldn’t get as intimidatingly close as she would have liked, due to the barrier, but Meg took advantage of her comparative (though still short) height to loom over the angel.

"How, for that matter, do you resurrect a demon? I died. The limey bastard stabbed me with an angelblade. I died!"

The angel overrode whatever made her stare like a deer. She glared directly at her, said “Miracles” in a teasing lilt, and with a wave of one arthritic hand, mojo-dragged Meg (more gently than expected) backwards until her legs hit the edge of the bed, then pushed her back into sitting with light, insistent force.

"Rest. Let your vessel heal. We don’t know yet if you’d be able to leave it. You don’t want to risk spending the rest of your life in an improperly formed body, do you?"

"You—you don’t know yet? How does that work!"

She was still held by the mojo. It let her thrash but wouldn’t let her stand.

Eventually, she threw herself back to lying on the bed. That, apparently, was kosher. She curled her arms around her midriff, leant back against the wall, again, and focused her impotent rage on staring out the window, hoping to judge the home’s location by the placement of the stars.

Not that she could navigate without knowing what part of the year it was. Could have been months or years after she died.

Besides, she’d always been rubbish at astronomy. Whenever the practice was necessary in the past she found a scholar to possess or tempt, to do the work for her.

Spera spoke again, said, “It’s not our business to alarm or trick you. When you’ve recovered, we’ll explain everything. Rest.”

Though the voice was gentle, it still cut deep, as Meg couldn’t comprehend what business the angel had in being nice, especially with her unable to fight back in any way. Keeping the panic down wasn’t so hard--she had ages of practice--but the traitorous, reasonable part of her kept chiming in, pointing out that this could easily be the place where she died a third time.

"Lemme give you a free conversational hint: cut it with the royal-we crap. No one talks like that anymore," snapped Meg, though the angel was already out of sight.

Probably still heard her, at least.

Fucking angels. Even when they try to help they’re right  pieces of work.

-

As it turned out, Spera didn’t talk in the royal we. Meg cursed whatever lucky stars provided her with even more daft, demon-resurrecting, overly solicitous angels. There were two of them. One, Lumen, watched her without saying a thing, not even introducing himself. For that, at least, she liked Lumen. The second, who introduced his sibling, then himself, was Gaudium. He wore who Meg assumed to be Daisy’s granddaughter, what with the similar facial structure (minus the bug-eyes) and the fact his vessel was a six-year old girl in a nightie that matched the bedsheets under Meg’s ass. He spoke gruffly, mouth wrapped around a cuban cigar, and warned her not to try any murdering or escaping as he chipped into the linoleum with the edge of a lighter to break the devil’s trap. He carried her out of it. She was by no means tall but Meg stood well over two feet above the vessel. It didn’t matter. They must have looked ridiculous.

Gaudium carried her over his shoulder, both her hands and feet dragging on the floor. Each time she wiggled to escape he held tighter.

She hated Gaudium.

This opinion only furthered when they reached the kitchen. He flung her into a chair, which promptly broke underneath her from the force.

They watched her fall. Neither offered a hand to help her up as she pulled herself from an undignified sprawl on the floor. It was just as well. She would have smacked any proffered hand, at this point, and didn’t want to find out if they’d kill her for the rude gesture.

Her legs complained. She leant into the table to offset the weight.   

The kitchen zapped well past cozy right to claustrophobic. Lumen’s vessel, some olive-skinned dude with sharp cheekbones, hunched underneath the cabinetry to gain some space away from Meg within the kitchen, while Gaudium stood in the threshold into the hallway. Spera, who hummed jauntily, fluttered over the stove, bumping occasionally into the table.

"Sit,” said Gaudium.

Meg took the seat closest to the stove. It left the humming angel at her back; she figured, at least she could hear Spera’s movements. The position let her keep an eye on the two newcomers. Lumen took the seat to her left.

"Who wants their toast buttered?"

"Do they have mint jelly?" asked Lumen. When Spera answered negative, he shook his head. "No toast, thanks."

From the corner of her eye, Meg caught sight of the pile of blackened toast, the smoke rising from the frying pan, the boiling-over pot next to it on the stove. On the counter sat a basket filled with eggs and a box of pre-cooked bacon. She decided to pretend that food wasn’t happening. Why would they eat breakfast together? None of them even needed to eat. If she stopped playing along with this charade it’ll turn out to be some new form of torture, some psychological, truly brain-breaking routine that could make Alastair weep with joy.

She pretended breakfast wasn’t happening for a full two minutes. When the newly returned Gaudium, perched on the back of a chair, leant back, feet against the table, she paid attention, though still kept a mental chant of ‘not real.’ When he popped three still-shelled eggs into his mouth? Nothing she couldn’t calm herself down from if she closed her eyes and breathed slowly.

When she heard the crunch of the shells? That broke her resolve. She couldn’t help herself. The strained “what the hell is happening” spilled right out of mouth.

Meg could handle torture. She could handle manipulations emotional, psychological, and physical. She apprenticed under the Grand Inquisitor of Hell himself. She could not—would not!—handle the sheer amount of weird happening to her. At this rate she’d do an acrobatic pirouette off the handle, very, very shortly.

Before she could, Spera placed the basket of eggs, the box of bacon, and the plate of toast in the center of the table, then sat down at the remaining seat, to Meg’s right. After a single, brief pat on the demon’s hand, she said, “Have breakfast.” and then handed her an egg.

"Food always was the best part about the Earth," said Lumen, dreamily. He tore open the box of bacon and, after shoving several pieces into his mouth, returned it--now gutted--to the middle of the table.

Meg peeled open her egg, added a few drops of hotsauce poured from the grime-covered bottle knocked over on the table, and with an air of study, Gaudium watched her do so; she rose her eyebrows and saluted with the egg before popping it into her mouth. He might have said “oh.” Not that she cared, either way, but she couldn’t even be sure, as she made a point to tune out the surrounding company after that initial exchange, focusing instead on the bacon in her hands, making a game out of eating it with as small of bites as possible.

It wasn’t as if she had anything better to do. Escape was pointless. She’d watched enough angels shove smoke back into a meatsuit before the smiting part of the equation to know she couldn’t escape under their watch. That was, if she could smoke out in the first place, if they hadn’t damaged her with their mad, dubious resurrection science.

Besides, she needed information. Such as—not to put too fine a point on things—whether they’d damaged her.

After swallowing the last centimetre of bacon, she slapped the table. China clinked.

"You said you’d explain everything. Now’s a good time to start, don’t you think?"

The three amigos shared a Look.

Spera nodded. Her hands knotted in her lap, scrunching up the dress.

"We would have come for you before, we really would have, but we were trapped. Even if you don’t remember, I want you to know that. We would have come for you. After they brought us back to Heaven, our superiors kept close watch on us, and if we even blinked in a mutinous way they’d have made us forget, returned us to factory settings. We weren’t allowed to leave. Anna’s garrison took over our duties as Watchers in addition to being the Army. During the War between Raphael and Castiel’s armies, many others escaped Heaven, but we were kept under close surveillance, still, by Intelligence. Apparently half of Heaven dead wasn’t enough to convince that lot to let us out from under their—."

Spera stopped, mouth still hanging open. Meg watched her and Gaudium have some silent argument.

"—Er. Not that the politics of Heaven are relevant to you. Let’s backtrack. You were, in your mortal life, nephilim. That body of yours, right now, is half-angel. We we were able to resurrect you despite your more recent status as a demon because, metaphysically speaking, resurrection is less an active process than allowing the rebuilt body to call to its soul, which it did. Your ‘death’ as a demon meant that you were no longer bound by Hell, and could return freely. The thing, though, is that with a proper resurrection you wouldn’t have any infernal powers. My current hypothesis is that since your soul doesn’t remember who you were, your body treated you as an outside, possessing entity. What’s more the question is if you’re still a demon or now an average ghost."

A proof was easy enough to manufacture. She threw her head back. Billowed half out of there before the angels rose, alarmed; she flew back down.

"Don’t worry. I’m not leaving this body so you can calling-card me right back. It was just a test."

She didn’t mention that she wouldn’t leave her body without burying it somewhere secret, first. Now, thanks to these mooks, not only were her bones aboveground and locatable, she carried them with her. In that, at least, they succeeded in making her a form of mortal. Anyone with a flamesource could kill her permanently.

With a bounce of subject-moving enthusiasm, she asked, leaning forward on her elbows over the table, “So! Why’d they have you in lockdown at homebase?”

Apparently the Look didn’t always have to be telepathic arguing. They stared at her, heads tilted.

All three of them said, in a chorus, “Begetting nephilim.”

As if she should have guessed that from context. Which, well, maybe she should’ve.

The chair toppled over when she stood. At least this one didn’t break. Meg turned to the stove, twisting the knob ‘off’ underneath the now burning, once boiling, completely evaporated pot. “What was this water for, anyway?”

"Eggs."

For the first time in a span of seven thousand years as malevolence upon the Earth, Meg found herself truly speechless. There just wasn’t anything to say. Philosophy’s general uselessness aside, her internal judgement of the situation flipped to thinking of this as the after-afterlife, far stranger than Hell.

-

Reading articles from the gossip magazines strewn about the living room filled in a few details. Six months had passed from when she led the pretty-boy daddy issues having trio to the angel tablet, and though none of the articles mentioned anything remotely Heavenly (surprising, considering the sorts of theories generally bandied about in tabloids) she assumed that a co-occurrence of an “unprecedented global meteor shower” and the release of previously banned, high security-jailed angels onto the Earth was not coincidental. All that remained unclear was whether Team Free Will caused the catastrophe directly.

The clocks chimed noon. After breakfast, the angels made themselves scarce, instead letting Meg free-roam. That said, they never avoided her too far. In the past few hours she had toured through the 800 sq ft ranch, studying each room out of boredom, and with each room she entered, eventually a guard followed, silent if not for the buzzing. Currently, Gaudium eyed her over his newspaper every few minutes from his position half-buried into the sofa, alternating afterwards with either pretending to read the newspaper or focusing on the ashes of his cigar, entranced. That these bozos were at one point Watchers made sense. Damn, could they sit there doing nothing but staring. Masters of the art, they were.

"Stop pacing. It’s annoying."

"I’ve been pacing for hours,” she said, folding her arms behind her back. The boards groaned under her steps, heavier out of spite, as she continued to circle the sofa and coffee table.

"For those hours, it was fine. Now it’s annoying."

"Why don’t you go anywhere? After thousands of years, you seriously telling me there’s nothing you want to do besides smoke cigars in someone’s living room?"

"A good cigar’s one of life’s luxuries."

"What about Castiel? He’s part of why you’re here, isn’t he? Is he alive?"

"Don’t presume to know why we’re here." Gaudium folded up the girl’s legs, stretching an arm over the armrest of the sofa. The plastic baubles in grand-daughter Daisy’s braids clacked against each other as he cricked his neck. "No one knows where Castiel is. He’s presumed alive. As for whether he was part of the problem: the better question’s when in recent memory hasn’t he been part of the problem."

He ground the end of the cigar into the armrest. “What’s it matter to you, though? You know him?”

"Castiel did spend two years consorting with the King of Hell," said Lumen, distracted, scurrying to the coffee table carrying an armful of maps. He scattered them across the surface and began to pour over their details, oblivious to Meg, whose mouth curled into a snarl.

"I never worked for that bastard Crowley, he’s the one who killed me—"

"Brothers, Meg had nothing to do with the civil war. She was on the run from new management. Hunted all of Lucifer’s loyalists, didn’t he?" There. Now that Spera chimed in, the triumvirate of stupid was officially back into session. “Incidentally, if it weren’t for the knight, you’d be looking at the rightful sovereign of Hell. Can’t imagine that helped win favour with the King."

"He killed me because I was going to kill him," she said, flatly.

For a flash, Spera smiled and winked at Meg. “Good news, then! The Queen’s on the hunt for Crowley trussed and humiliated. You won’t need to hide from him again.”

She then sat beside Lumen, to deal with the maps.

Meg balked. “The Queen?”

"Abaddon,” one of them replied. “Hadn’t you heard?"

"Must’ve been dead at the time."

No one replied.

To comfort herself for wasting her pearly witticism before literal-minded, distracted swine, Meg ventured to the kitchen for a beer. Three sets of eyes stared keenly at her upon her return.

"You were a loyalist, though, weren’t you?" asked Spera.

She gulped down the beer. They stared. She belched, just to be rude. They kept staring, without moving a centimetre. Meg gave up. She gestured airily, empty beer bottle still cold against her hand.

“That matters because—?”

"We need to get to St Mary's Convent. Do you know the way?"

Meg pursed her lips, irritated.

“You finally tell me where we are and I can get you there. What’s the point, though? You gonna spring Lucifer back out of his box, now with a second pissed-off archangel?”

The three shared a Look. Meg waited for the sibling telepathic argument to end.

(She was reasonably sure that’s what the Look meant.)

“That's a reasonable summary of our plan, yes. There’s a car out front. We’re in Pennsylvania. Can we get there before tomorrow?”

Wouldn’t that make a blockbuster. A demon kidnapee and her three bumblefuck angel kidnappers, on a roadtrip to rescue Satan and St Michael from Hell. She could hear the voice-over already. Meg shrugged, grunted affirmative, and followed said bumblefucks out to the car.

At least they were willing to let her drive. She did not want to experience ‘never rode a horse let alone driven a car’ shenanigans.

"Let’s roll,” she growled, gunning the engine (which sounded as if it might explode. Grannies aren’t known for their auto upkeep.)

Maybe this really was Demon Heaven. Demon Hell. Demon Purgatory? All of them sounded stupid. The point was, she died, and now she was embroiled on some acidtrip Road to Enlightenment, and really, she’s willing to roll with it. If there was one thing the demon Meg did, it was roll with the punches. Even the stupefyingly shitty ones.

She might as well have fun with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> borrowing danielle brooks for meg's [mortal face](http://mizhollywood.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/danielle_brooks_caro_page-bg_32162-1024x640.jpg)


	2. Diner of the Damned

The drive to St Mary’s Convent passed uneventful. She felt, occasionally, the weighty stare of some flightless a-hole peeping on the back of her head, but ignored it. Instead, she focused on reaching the car to its destination. They took the interstate most of the way.

By the time they reached Ilchester itself, she felt surprised, overall, with how easily the trip came to her. Even after a confusing set of turns in-town, she figured out the path from the few details she remembered from tailing Yellow Eyes back in ‘72, when he took his pilgrimage to talk to their Lord.

The old man went all on his own, refused to tell anyone else the location. Meg couldn’t stop herself. She followed him.

Amazed her the entire time that he didn’t roast her for her troubles, too. Must’ve been more even excited than she was. All she heard was the screams from the nuns. She hadn’t dared get closer. All told, bit of a wasted trip, at the time.

Once, shortly after the Apocalypse, bereft of a better option, she returned.

It took decades of planning, of toil and sacrifice, years of impeccable clockwork to free Lucifer. All of it was wasted. The sorry sack of holy-enough juice went and lost the plot, and his ass was thrown back into the dirt. Everyone she cared about died in that effort.

Maybe he heard her. She wasn’t sure if she cared whether or not he could, but it felt appropriate to talk about all the people who worked to free the god that couldn’t even have the grace to not get shown up by some chumpy humans. It took days, to get from the earliest point, when Azazel first picked her from among the hell-kin, through the thousands of years they searched for an opening to the Cage, to the boyking business and then, finally, Lilith undoing the seals.

More than anything, it made her miss her father (and Tom.) Maybe even a demon can’t spend that much time with people and not grow to love them. Even if they did betray her in the end.

As much as she’d not appreciated Azazel, in recent years, at least when he was alive, she wasn’t a fugitive. If she hadn’t started to get all retrospectively fond of the guy during Lucifer’s reign, being on the run from Crowley’s people certainly made her all the more nostalgic for her old life.

-

Shortly before noon, they reached their destination. The car pulled into the parking space smoothly. What was once St Mary’s Convent was now a greasy spoon. Even if she were one to doubt her navigations, the surrounding establishments remained unchanged. Who’d believe it?

Not Meg, for starters. Didn’t even matter that she was right in front of the proof.

Now, as well as being the mouth of the Cage, it was a diner named—according to a sign half-obscured by plastic vines—Parthenon. Tinny, watery music played from the speakers attached to stucco-covered columns. There were garden gnomes holding ceramic pizza boxes beside the entrance.

Theism wasn’t necessarily her gig, anymore. The sight still made her feel violently ill.

The post-destiny world was such a funny old place. A real stinker.

In the backseat, the cherubs convened. Not being able to hear their telepathic bullshit didn’t preclude Meg from knowing that it would annoy her.

A moment later, Spera coughed. “Are you sure this is the right place?”

"This is where the convent used to be. Nobody guaranteed it’d still be standing. Whatever fool plan you have to jimmy open the Cage, you need in there."

Meg cut off the ignition. An elderly Chinese couple passed the front of the car, into the restaurant.

"We should eat," said Lumen, as if inspired by the geriatrics. He climbed over his sister, threw open the car door, and stood, waiting, all but thrumming in impatience as no one else moved.

"It’s obviously a front," she snapped.

"Then we’ll check it out while eating."

"It wasn’t a distress call." Spera shrugged. "What could it hurt?"

Inside, a waitress pulled open the window blinds. Human, as far as Meg could discern.

What the hell. If things got hairy, she trusted her ability to scamper, and until then, she could enjoy some complimentary refreshment.

-

It appeared, to any measurement, a perfectly normal diner.

Meg even chatted up the customers—namely, the elderly couple they saw walk in moments before. They found the place charming, apparently. Depending on which of them was talking, the grisly murder that occurred on the spot forty years ago either added to the appeal, or didn’t detract from it.

The diner was real new, though. The town demolitioned the abandoned convent back in 2011 but no one built anything over the rubble until the diner broke ground late-May 2013.

Business was still picking up, they said. Not a day passed the seats were full, but several loyal, repeat customers came on a regular basis, like them.

The angels waved her back to the table; the human waitress stood over them, notebook ready.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The low-key aura of the place and the kitschy wall decorations almost seemed to mock Meg for investigating.  

Idly, she wondered if she could make a break for it, now. Things were calm. The angels seemed disinclined to fly, and she had a car. What were the merits of escape, though? Ultimately? If these dumbos were who they claimed, they were her family. Couldn’t that count for something?

They could be lying, her instincts told her, insistent. They might simply be masters of the art of appearing incompetent. She’d burrowed her way into enough hearts and minds to never wholly trust anyone with sweet words.

That said, even her well-founded paranoia had to admit they seemed too stupid for subterfuge. If it was a long con, she had to give them points for skill.

If she vamoosed, she’d have to figure out what to do with her life. That was, in itself, a dilemma.

Abaddon, if the rumours passed along by the cherubs were true, would kill Crowley, which anti-climatically nullified Meg’s efforts of the past half-decade. It left her without a cause.

Without her plan to decapitate the King, she had no need for a Winchester team-up. Just as well. She didn’t want anything to do with them, anyway. They left her to die. Twice! No one but them ever got that level of loyalty from her, and still they’d spit in her face if she went back to them. No thanks. Wasn’t worth the hassle. She could find new friends.

Castiel, okay. She wouldn’t mind a rendezvous with angelface. Chances were, though, that he wasn’t any less attached at the hip with the male model stab-happy ingrates. Greatly reduced the sex appeal.

Getting her jollies with him could wait. Maybe until after the Winchesters stayed dead? Quite the miraculous day, that. They could celebrate. Then, she wouldn’t need to worry he might pop off to where his real priorities were when things got interesting. Sounded like a plan.

Besides, she hated herself, a little, for wanting to see Castiel again. It was one of the things she dreamt about, the year Crowley kept her. Talk about unbecoming. A demon with a crush on anyone, let alone an angel? Pathetic. She was better than that.

Yeah. She definitely wanted to wait out her crush on Cas. Maybe if she waited long enough it would stop existing, and she could look herself in the mirror again. Anything could happen, right?

Besides, they were both immortal. If they managed not to get killed, they could live forever. She’d see him around.

What if she stayed with the cherubs, then? Best case scenario, she’d have a family. She’d have people loyal to her. She’d have three weapons that might even love her. What was the worst case scenario? They were lying. They planned to use her for something awful. if it came to that, she felt capable enough of outperforming them and escaping.

Everyone she gave her hopes and loyalty to betrayed her in the end. But with these people, she didn’t have hopes. They were the ones fawning over her. Maybe she could give it a chance. If nothing else, she looked forward to the novelty.

The waitress, Delta, came back with their food. The cherubs dug in, enthusiastically, as well as disgustingly. Not a one of them used a single utensil the entire time they stuffed their gobs. Her new lifeplan meant she would have to teach these idiots table manners.

The education could wait. A woman joined Delta on the floor, and talked animatedly with the old couple, asking after their life since lunch the day before. The manager, most likely. At first, Meg assumed she was human, like the waitress. She couldn’t see anything crouched underneath the meatsuit.

Considering the cherubs stiffened when the woman approached their table, Meg doubted her assumption.

"Hello there, all. How has the day been treating you?" she said, warmly. “We want everyone to be comfortable. Angels included. There’s nothing wrong with some celestials now and again, so long as they agree to a smiting amnesty."

She winked at Meg.

That was absolutely a wink, directed at Meg. She frowned. “Do I know you?”

The woman laughed, a quick bark, then tapped her fingers against Meg’s shoulder, lightly. “Sister, you shouldn’t treat me like a stranger.”

That was certainly portentous. Meg could not remember where it came from, though.

Somehow, she blocked her trueform. Meg didn’t recognize the meatsuit, and couldn’t begin to guess at her actual identity. Any of the old guard should be imprisoned in Hell, or dead.

In came a group of twenty-odd construction workers, turning the dining area from an awkwardly silent save for chewing (and slurping, gross) affair to a packed, boisterous watering hole. Still not what one would call hotbed of infernal activity. The single point of contention was Manager Not-A-Human.

Her, and the way Gaudium unhinged his jaw to inhale a country fried steak. The dude might categorically be anything but infernal, but that did not make what he was doing natural, or right. There was also—though she could not understand _why_ —a set of taxidermied jackalopes, donned with fezzes and having a tea party, on the half-wall dividing the smoking from the non-smoking area, a division as pointless as it was illegal. There was one of these she could do something about. At the snap of Meg’s fingers, the jackalopes were in the street, for a better life, ideally involving a motor vehicle and the crushing power several tons of steel can provide.

She then excused herself from the table, and walked to the back of the restaurant.

-

Inside, there were four people total. As soon as the cook plated the food, Delta shot out of the kitchen. Three people, then.

That left the dishwasher and the cook, both of whom studiously pretended not to notice Meg, and the manager, who turned to greet her. “What brings you lot here?”

"Oh, seeing the sights. Not much to them besides a diner over Lucifer’s Cage. Real short tour," she drawled.

"You’ve been out a long time, haven’t you? Archangels are old news. We’re insurance, only. No one’s chomping at the bit to get here."

She opened a drawer in the butcher block island, and transferred into it small, white object from her pocket. Suddenly, her face was visible. Chihuahua-like, with jackal’s ears and the beak of an owl. Her smoke verged on the greener tinge of black. Meg had to admit, she felt stupid for not guessing the identity of the woman before now, even though she’d supposedly died during the Apocalypse.

That little turncoat wasn’t Meg’s sister. But at one point, she was. Of all the people to run this farce above the Cage, naturally it would be the goddamn woman who spoonfed the murderous little Sammy Winchester into trying to stop Lilith.

Unmoved by the fact Meg hadn’t replied, Ruby continued talking, though she focused her attention on digging through the drawer.

"It’s an entirely different world. The new Queen has risen, come to save us all. There won’t be a Hell anymore. Or Heaven." she pulled out several knives, a pile of receipts, an overburdened three-ring binder, and, at last, two identical cellphones. "These are the days of miracle and wonder. For real, this time."

One of the phones she threw across the counters to the frycook, who caught it deftly without looking. She and the dishwasher were in the midst of a low conversation. A mask the same material as Ruby’s trinket covered half of her face, as well as blocking out her trueform.

Ruby held the other phone, and began to page through her binder, jotting down the occasional note. As far as Meg could tell, she was balancing the books for the diner. As if it were a real business. As if Ruby were a human. Beyond that, as if she and Meg weren’t in the middle of a conversation!

"What qualifications does Abaddon even have, as a ruler?" she approached the island and peered at the binder. As suspected, the thing was brimming with fiscal responsibility. "No heaven or hell’s a damn fine campaign promise. Any idea how she’s accomplishing it?"

Ruby stared at Meg as if she insulted dear, dead Azazel instead of a distant Knight.

"Crowley never announced it, but I knew you were dead. Want to know how?"

"You looked me up? How sweet."

"Try those angels of yours.” she gestured at the dining area vaguely with one hand, while jotting down another note in the binder. “They questioned anyone who could remember a single fact about you, so they could find your mortal corpse. They don’t care about you, Thekla, they want whoever you were as a human. You coming back as a demon was a mistake.”

With a flourish, she closed the binder, finally, and jabbed the pen into the side of her sensible, managerial bun, and added, “Did they tell you they came to open the Cage? It’s impossible. Lilith would need to be alive.”

"That’s on you and Sam, though, isn’t it?" said Meg, with a sneer.

"How about blaming Lucifer? He could’ve brought her back. Or God! He was the one who decided the first demon should be the last seal."

“What are you talking about? Lilith wasn’t the last seal.”

“Yeah, because you were totally up to date on that! What do you think it was like, when we first got out of Hell? There was Lilith and our army, ready to march, and the vessel’s gone, Azazel’s dead, and the rest of you were AWOL. Never saw you or Tom or anyone else those years, and trust me, I would’ve seen you; I had to drag darling Sammy the entire fucking way. Who did she trust with that? Me. No one else. Certainly not you. You weren’t even there.”

At that moment, louder than Ruby yelling, a sound like the shrieking of a thousand vessel-less angels cut through the diner. The dishwasher fell to the ground, clutching her ears, while the masked frycook crouched over her, grimacing and writhing. Then, above them, the lights burst. The fire alarm blared.

The edges of Ruby’s smoke were evaporating. Weals rapidly formed on her vessel and she smelled of burning sulphur. She was texting. Before Meg could get out so much as “the fuck’s wrong with you,” there was a small, vice-like grip that caught her, followed by sinewy arms and grace.

Spera held her close, murmuring nothings and petting her hair, something that Meg made a note, distantly, to complain about in the future, to save face. Currently, though, she was much too distracted; even with the angel’s grace as a shield, the light flayed her.

In every direction, all she could see was light.

The next moment, it was gone, along with the diner. Lots of rubble, at least, to remember the old girl by, along with a few corpses.

Above her, Spera flitted her hands over Meg checking her for wounds, clucking. There were several. Meg peeled away from the attention.

Some twenty feet in the opposite direction, where the tables used to be, were Gaudium and Lumen, wings spread over the diner patrons and Delta, the waitress. Dust caught against the edges.

It shouldn’t have surprised her that the younger demon was wrong. You could count on Ruby for a lot of things, but character judgement had never been one of them. Meg knew this from experience. Once, centuries ago, she was the shady character insufficiently judged.

Though she had detached herself from Spera, the angel still hovered next to Meg, shock still, all barely concealed tension.

Ruby sidestepped around the daisy-printed guard, movements slow from the extensive burns. She drew close to Meg, who laughed in her face, because no one was stupid enough to open the Cage. Obviously.

"No need to feel low. Your luck struck out, kiddo. Who’d expect a break-out when they can feel smug about no one breaking in?"

The cellphone buzzed. Ruby’s hands shot out, anchors curled around Meg’s elbows, and before she could fight her way out they vanished.

-

Not that they actually vanished. They were summoned.

Now, they were in an office, with austere, grey walls and dark, pointy, modern furniture. Behind an overly large desk sat a bright-eyed young demon, wearing the kind of white girl you might see fifteen minutes late somewhere, with a starbucks cup in hand. At least her suit was sharp.

For a moment, her eyes flashed red.

“You’ll be lucky if the Queen doesn’t filet you,” she said, baring her teeth. Smiling. Something in-between.

Instead of replying, Ruby told Meg, “You might not recognize her, since the facelift. This is Bela, the Master of the Crossroads. Bela, you should remember Meg.”

Thank fuck Ruby decided to introduce her by her current name. The last time she voluntarily went by Thekla, people were still flailing themselves to end the Black Death.

It seemed as if Bela remembered her, anyway. She immediately perked up. “You survived Crowley! What a surprise.”

However, neither the name nor the title meant anything to Meg. She rolled on her heels. “What, did Crowley get territorial over his old playground and refuse to let you be Queen?”

"Not at all.  I simply preferred to broaden the terminology."

Bela hopped out of the chair, and slid around the desk to stand beside Meg, focused on the office’s glass door, through which came a pale demon, a bit of an Angelina Jolie looking type, if shorter, with an entirely different face, one covered by black-rimmed glasses. She, too, wore a suit, albeit more somber than Bela’s. She entered the office in the middle of some explanation.

“We’ve never seen interference like it, on angel radio, even when they all fell from Heaven. I figured what else could it be, right? It had to be the archangels. You said to update you whenever anything important happened. If this isn’t important then I might as well wrap business up here, right?”

Abaddon swept past the babbling demon. The room felt heavier, with her in it. More real. Not that Meg would ever give her the satisfaction of admitting it.

Last time they met, the Knight’s favoured meatsuit was a comely, dark-skinned Amazigh youth, an anarchist from Algiers who should’ve died in the trenches. At first, she rode him through the western front, but after she ignored a pile of summons from Azazel, a message from Alastair bade her to quit the joyride and report for duty in the United States. It was years, by that point, since Yellow Eyes took over as leader—after the blasted nuisance Colt trapped Lilith in that Devil’s Gate—and yet she had still refused to take orders from anyone lesser than an archdemon.

Generally, she preferred male vessels. It was a surprise to see Abaddon dolled up as a femme fatale, complete with bouncy, brassy curls and jade eyeliner. Even her nails and lipstick co-ordinated.

The three subordinates faded, to Meg. All her focus was on Abaddon, her mechanical, folded-too-small trueform, with elk’s antlers and blue wisps of fire licking from between the cogs of her gears and her joints. For thousands of years, Meg never questioned why Abaddon looked so different from most demons.

The memory was buried, before, under years of things she didn’t care to remember, but she saw something that looked like the Knight, when she was first in Hell.

-

Her earliest memory was clawing over the other damned souls in the lake of fire, gulping down precious, tepid breaths, not unlike people who claim to remember before they were born. She wasn’t even a demon at that point. Her next memory was the first time Alastair complimented one of her designs.

Maybe it was seeing Abaddon, or having her mortal body, but now, she could recall that high above the throng, looming over the tallest dais of Pandemonium, was an angel, terrifying but mesmerizing, with wings that were the buzz of locusts and a halo made of strange shapes, formed of clay. Miles below, slapped against flesh, scratched at, jabbed, and burned, the soul that Meg once was fought with a new viciousness at the sight of the only beautiful thing in Hell.

There was a life outside the lake. She could escape.

Slowly, her fingers turned to claws. Horns, small cones, prickled over her skin like freckles. Her ribs became a hornet’s nest. The others dunked her less and less often. Her hands grew webs, to wade better. She stung, with her hornets, swiped the others down, scratched at them with barbs, from her fingers and her tail. Over years, the tide of flesh rose, and Meg, no longer flesh at all, grappled with arms like stilts when a crash threw her against a cliff. The others swarmed to her, but she thrashed against them, sliced and bucked and screeched, until she, alone, climbed the precipice and could gulp down soothing breaths on a flat, solid surface, greedy.

The angel no longer loomed above. She searched, through the circles, but found them empty. Perhaps she’d been wrong, and all of Hell was the lake?

All she found was the sound of locusts, amplified by the walls. It was deafening.

Eventually, there was a demon, who crowed at the luck of meeting her. The guardian of Hell gave up her post and unlocked the gate. Everyone else escaped, bound for cooler climes. He’d lost all his best subjects.

 _Aren’t you an auspicious thing?_ he said, as he tied her to a slab and dug in.

-

It’s not as if they could resurrect Lilith to have her open the Cage again.

The perps didn’t need Lilith. They had a key.

-

The demons at both sides of Meg stood to attention. Ruby had a slight air of impending doom while Bela had an even slighter—barely a blip—air of satisfaction. Meg popped a crick in her shoulders.

"Your Highness," said Bela, with a deferential tilt of her head. "We couldn’t prevent the break-in, but Ruby was stationed there, if you would like to question her."

“But where has our extra come from?” Abaddon hmm’d, patting Meg's face. “My, isn’t this an old model. Where’d you get your reconstruction done?”

“Some feathery airheads didn’t get the memo they weren’t supposed to help demons,” she said, removing herself from the other’s grasp, noting, dimly, that it was impressive Abaddon let her.

Switching to business, the Knight folded her arms behind her back and addressed the four of them, even though Meg wasn’t, strictly speaking, an employee. Perhaps, to Abaddon, it wasn’t as if there was a choice; she could submit or she could die.

That sounded about right. Abaddon always was a flashy broad.

“This is not a setback. Now, we know that someone has the key to Hell, and that it still works. All we need to do is find it, and not only will we be able to return the archangels to their Cage, but our march to Purgatory will be made easier.”

As she paused, for emphasis, an interrupting cough came from Bela, who asked, “Are the Crypts are no longer a priority, then?”

“Outsource the expeditions to Mazikeen. I want you to focus on nullifying any remaining contracts. Report back when you have finished.”

Bela nodded, before translocating.

“You two both have experience with the Winchesters, correct? Find them. There might be something in the Men of Letters’ mother lode about the key that we can use to track it. The building itself is warded extensively, and hidden, but I have faith you can manage.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” said Ruby, bowing. Meg went for an easy salute. (What could she say? She wanted to get into the spirit of the thing.)

For the last of them, the orders were a simple “You know what to do,” and then Abaddon sauntered out of the office.

“How about it?” Ruby elbowed her, grinning.  “Wanna drop in on destiny’s favourite life ruiners?”

This was the exact opposite of the life Meg had accepted not an hour before. All the changes since she came back from double-death might just give her whiplash! It wasn’t a choice, though. Even if a not-insubstantial part of Meg still hated the woman’s guts, Ruby was her sister, from a life she actually remembered. What was the saying? The blood of the covenant’s thicker than water. Ruby was the only surviving Lucifer loyalist besides Meg. She couldn’t leave her now that she had found her.

“It would be my pleasure,” she said, a return grin forming on her face against her will. It was the excitement of a little payback, was all.

Ruby could claim these were the new days of miracle and wonder all she wanted; reality was, that train left years ago. These were the days of surprises and weird shit. Maybe they would turn out better than the failed Apocalypse, though. It didn't seem like the world could get much worse.


	3. Little Talks

Turned out, summoning was the en-vogue method of transportation. At Ruby’s behest, some mooks in Charlottesville threw a little of this and a little of that into a bowl, lit it up, and the two of them were a few blocks from Ruby’s safehouse.

Completely blew Meg’s mind. Even as Azazel’s lieutenant, she’d never have trusted random assholes with how to make her show up, no matter where she was or her opinion on the matter. As it was, she wasn’t too happy with the fact Ruby knew how to, either, or that she’d already given that information over to Abaddon’s forces.

Ruby shook off her concerns, completely blase about this paradigm shift. “Crowley started it. Easy way to get everyone where they need to go, even the ones who aren’t powerful enough to teleport yet.”

They stopped in front of a small rowhouse duplex, with seafoam-green clapboard and a baby’s breath wreath on the front. Meg followed her up the flight of stairs, noting, idly, the spaces where photos must have been, recently. There were still the faint outlines of dust. She rose her eyebrow, drawled out, “Still seems reckless.”

Because it was. Talk about asking to get ganked! Did Crowley ever give out his summoning spell? What about this seemed anything but a terrible idea?

"Honour system. Anyone who cheats gets killed."

"Don’t see where that’s gonna help you, if the cheater wants you dead."

At the top of the stairs was a narrow hallway. There was a bathroom to her immediate left, an open doorway to a living room across from her, and, down the hall, two more doors, shut. Ruby went through the furthest one and closed it behind her.

Meg sauntered through the doorjam. The living room was a nice, cozy little space, with an attached kitchen, an addition built illegally as well as incompetently. The floor sunk at nearly a 45’ angle from the interior to the outer wall. Looking at the folding table and bookshelf hurt Meg’s eyes, so she turned her snooping back to the living room. It looked well-lived in, if dusty, with a pile of blankets over the loveseat. Same as in the hallway, there were the obvious spaces where pictures used to be.

Ruby couldn’t have expected visitors. Whatever she was hiding, it was from herself, foremost. There was a chance the apartment (and its hidden emotional drama) belonged to the meatsuit, Meg supposed, with a nod to Occam’s Razor, but her instincts told her that girl hadn’t lived anywhere in a long, long time.

"Figured you’d want a change. Sorry, there wasn’t anything better," said Ruby, as she strolled into the room with a handful of clothes. Though none of the choices were ideal, there sure was variety among them, a small horde of drapey numbers, all designed to hang loose on someone skinnier than Meg. She picked a cherry-red 80s-style sweater, printed with day-glo glitter stars, and a pair of greyish-pink sweatpants that had butterflies embroidered near the hem. It made her feel ridiculous, but they, at least, didn’t involve letters emblazoned on her tits or ass, or rainbow vomit color schemes that’d give Lisa Frank heart palpitations.

Anything beat soulful eyed puppies, she reminded herself, like a mantra. Anything. After the job, she could find a nice, normal jacket/jeans outfit for her inconveniently sized meatsuit.

Hastily, she shucked off her clothes and pulled on the new ones. With humans, she’d have bothered going to the bathroom to appease their sense of propriety, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to care. Why have modesty? It’s not as if the body were hers.

Wait — it totally was her body, wasn’t it? Oops. Still, hard to get bashful around someone who’s seen you without your skin.

It did seem to discomfit the other demon, though. She picked lint off the blankets, averting her gaze. Talk about making things awkward, Ruby.

This new creature was not the hellbeast Meg remembered. Honest work? An actual home?? With decorations???

Not to mention, she was clearly hung up over an old flame. Someone threw Ruby off her game, _hard_ , someone more recent than the would-be boyking.

Almost a waste she and Sam couldn’t be forever-pals. They were the same level of chump, giving up everything. The sight gave Meg some hope for her own pathetic crush. At least she still had some damn dignity.

"Alright, dish. Who’s this place a shrine to?” she straightened the sweater — it pulled awkwardly on her armpits — and rolled on her heels, smirking, “Creepy, man. There better not be any locks of hair in those bedrooms.”

"Funny thing, I got a home, a place to leave my shoes. Real convenient." Ruby threw a piece of lint to the floor, mechanical. "I took it over from Coma Girl here."

Not interested in your weird emotional problems, lady. You wanna be cagey about shit no one cares about, by god, you live that dream. Meg gestured, vaguely. Time to move the subject along. “Let’s talk mission. Where’re we gonna start looking for them?”

Maybe she should’ve been less efficient at killing all of John’s friends, years ago. That’d have helped.

From what Bela had told Cecily, who told it to Ruby, no one, human or otherwise, saw or heard from either of the Winchesters in the months since the angels fell. Crowley, still in their well-toned clutches, called Abaddon via a goblet of blood mid-June, and that was it for contact with the outside world, as far as anyone knew. Attempting to tail them through Castiel hadn’t worked. For whatever reason, he never went to home base.

From the available information, Ruby was convinced they hadn’t left the bunker.

The idea those two yahoos could forgo their pathological drive to save the day floored Meg. Unbelievable. There simply wasn’t any way that the monster hunting bug hadn’t crawled up their asses at some point in four months. Cecily and Bela’s networks were certainly extensive, but they still had limits, and absence of proof wasn’t proof of absence.

It wasn’t a lead she’d normally bother pursuing, but there was a hunter’s watering hole a few hours away, outside Gatlinburg. Meg suggested they start there and try to shake something from the grapevine.

After a short break for Ruby to take a shower, the time-wasting freak.  After that.

They went out the stairs at the back, down to the shed, where a beaten-down, once-bright orange Mustang had been living under a tarp. Ruby didn’t even try to pretend that was the dead girl’s, at least.

The way things were going, it’d be a damn shame they didn’t have some classic rock tapes to blare out the stereo. Sure enough, a pile of tapes sat in the middle of the seat. For some reason, though, they were all the same thing: the Best of Queen.

-

Gatlinburg was a quiet mountain town, if you kept out of the touristy bits. Nothing but curving deer trail roads winding too steep. The bar was several miles out of town, a two-story, saloon-wanting-to-be travesty of lumber and decorative skulls hidden behind a thicket of woods, a clusterfuck of poor design choices that gave off the impression someone’d tried to make money off the skiers before realizing tourists would never go so far out of town and took to serving the obsessively homicidal/recklessly suicidal.

Meg cut off the radio, stopping another one bites the dust mid ah-ah-ah. “What do you think are the chances they got a Devil’s Trap right inside the door?”

"Slim. You know hunters aren’t that smart. Shouldn’t bother you, though. If we could already walk on consecrated ground, it stands to reason coming back nephilim might mean anti-demon measures might not work."

"When the three amigos had me, their trap worked. I’m not going in there by myself," she said, tightly.

Two days alive wasn’t enough to get her back to her old bluster. Years ago, she would’ve barged in, without a worry, but it was a different world, now.

"Don’t be a pussy, Meg!"

"I’m not risking my ass by myself. All you gotta do is cover me. Who’s being the coward here?"

As much as she preferred a ding against her pride than dying, it still stung. The old her would’ve cut out her tongue before asking someone for help.

"Seriously? For all we know, your personal angel squad would bring you right back," Ruby scoffed. Still, she unbuckled her seatbelt, and threw herself out of the car, glowering. "New plan, then: you get caught, I’ll cover you. Don’t bet on me getting killed to save your ass, though."

"Wouldn’t dream of it. If I need a sacrifice from a kid like you, I’m better off dead.”

The doors slammed open underneath her palms, a loud crash into the walls that didn’t draw a single wayward glance. Churlish entrances weren’t exactly rare. No one’d take a second look at her, if it weren’t for her oddly hanging sweater and ‘gave up on life, eating ben&jerry’s by the tub’ pants; for that, several neckbeards glared at her judgmentally, and she gave each of them a saucy wink. When she made it all the way to the bar, Ruby followed.

Barkeep was a rakish, mustachioed Indian guy, sporting an entire old-timey getup, complete with sleeve garters and pince-nez. Threw her back to the days hunting down Samuel Colt.

“Two whiskeys, if you could.”

Ruby sat next to her, playing up the wallflower gimmick; she even looked put out when Meg knocked both the shots back, as if one should’ve been hers. Unless that was genuine. Maybe Ruby really expected Meg to be a gentle — oh fuck that was not normal alcohol.

Was nothing sacred? Asshole hunters blessed the liquor!

Meg might’ve asked herself if that didn’t mean the booze actually was sacred, but, one could expect her not to focus on such things. Gagging and stopping herself from hissing in pain was more of a priority. Last time she took a glug of holy water she jumped out a window, so, she figured so long as her flip-out stuck to banging her fists into the counter, no one’d suspect she was a demon instead of lightweight.

Did give some credence to Ruby’s theory. Didn’t mean she was allowed to look so gleeful about it, the tramp. See how superior she looked with her lungs scorched.

(Ruby glared at her. Damn, that used to always send her into the fetal position.)

While Meg’s display garnered a condescending look from Barkeep, he didn’t reach for the salt, or a gun. Instead, he ignored her with a smooth transition to pouring drafts for some WWE-looking cusses.

After a few more coughs to sell the the image, she threw up a hand to catch the kid’s attention. “You happen to see either of John Winchester’s boys recently? Been trying to raise them for months, keep getting bupkis.”

He looked incredulous.

"You knew John Winchester?"

"We met once or twice, through Pastor Jim," she grinned, toothily, too-pleased with herself. Ruby clawed down her back, psychically, for the cheap joke, but the complete lack of recognition on the human’s face was worth a few scratches. Talk about priceless.

He pointed across the floor. “Tracy over there’s your best bet. Sorry I can’t be more help.”

"Now, no need for that. That’s more than I knew walking in, ain’t it? Keep my tab open."

Behind her, she could hear the rustle of Ruby paying for them, the stooge, but her main focus was the booth holding what’s her name, Tracy. Good bone structure, silky hair, young; a sight, indeed, and different from your average hunter — put her in the mind of that girl in Carthage. Joanne, or something. Papa Winchester put her Daddy down like a dog. Chances were high this sweet thing had a sob story, too. Seemed the only way anyone got into the business.

She wondered what it was, and how much it’d take to coax it out of her, to start fucking with her well-conditioned head.

She wasn’t yet 100% sold on serving Abaddon, but she had to admit, working the case gave her a chance to feel more herself than she had in years, worthy of her rank and titles, as opposed to a mincing sissy who couldn’t even chat up some hunters without backup.

That was the point she tripped.

A grab at her calf let her pretend it was a sudden charley horse instead of the Devil’s Trap that someone must’ve painted under the floor —nice— but there’s not a pair of eyes around that isn’t watching her closely, now. No problem. Not yet. Ruby was right about the holy water. All she has to do is power her ass out across some paint, and the bar’ll go back to its usual level of surliness.

How’d Spera put it? Coming back as a demon was psychosomatic, a side-effect of not remembering who she was in life. If she could scrounge a memory from her meatsuit, that might un-demon her enough to pop free.

Which was a much nicer plan before she checked her body’s memories. The thing was chewed through like some moths found mama’s wedding dress. She couldn’t find anything more substantial than a smell here, a color there.

The bar was silent. A chair dragged against the wood floor.

It felt like someone had stabbed her from behind, through her stomach. She couldn’t see the bar, anymore; the image of a thousand soldiers, blocking out the sky with their glory, superimposed over the dark wood and dim light, the stale, yeasty smells replaced with burnt flesh, blood and offal.

She stumbled over the line of the trap, gasping.

The humans went back to their affairs. Heavier than any of their stares was Ruby’s condescension. Meg didn’t need to look back at the other demon to see her shit-eating grin; she could feel it.

A carton of eggs might’ve smashed all over her face, but at least there couldn’t be a single patron left who’d think she was a threat. Focus on the positives, Meg. Her mark probably wondered how she survived hunting long enough to ruin the atmosphere with her incompetence.

Finally, she reached Tracy’s booth, tucked away with the folded-up tables and piled chairs. Meg patted herself down, smiled congenially, a little nod back from where she came, “Fly on the wall said you might be able to help me out. Mind if I sit down?”

Tracy’s face might tell Meg where she can shove it, but the girl gestured with her hand for her to sit.

She huddled into the booth —might as well really sell it on the ‘how hasn’t this lady died’ front— and peeped around, eyes wide and paranoid, said, “Heard you might have some info on the Winchesters. I’ve been tracking this demon they’d supposedly taken care of. “

"Which one?" Tracy rolled her eyes. "You can’t swing a cat near them without bumping into one ugly sulphuric gun or another."

"Real particular one. You might’ve heard talk about it. They called it the Yellow Eyed Demon."

Generally, she concocted more elaborate lies, but didn’t have the patience, at present, for art. Not that Tracy showed a single blip of recognition. Did they really leave such a fleeting impression? Boo.

Meg held out her hands, palms up, tapped her knuckles against the sticky wood, “They claimed they iced the bitch out at Devil’s Gate, Wyoming. Except, recently, there’s been a rash of the same MO, mothers of six-month old babies torched on the ceiling. He always left omens — cattle deaths, electrical storms. Looked into it, whole bunch’ve dead cows. Dunno if the boys are any use but I saw John on more than one occasion with a book of his, a journal. He kept everything he knew in there. Was hoping if I caught up to them they’d let me take a peek, maybe I could find something they missed. That, or maybe convince them to clean up their mess themselves.”

"Wouldn’t trust them to clean up a ice cream cone, but I think I can help you. Met a guy outside Toledo that was looking for them, too. Clarence." She pulled out her cellphone. "I’ll give you the number so you can hit him up."

Not being dead kept getting better.

-

Ruby awaited, in the drivers seat of the Mustang. Texting, naturally.

"Sometime you gotta tell me what made you go native," she said, exasperated, after plopping into the car.

"Modern, more like. How’s it any more ‘native’ than boozing or fucking?"

"Even bacteria booze and fuck."

"No they don’t!"

"They ferment, they reproduce. Just ask Pestilence."

Name dropping wasn’t the classiest maneuver, but hey, she had to put up with his smelly, sanctimonious ass during the Apocalypse, had to run errands for all the Horsemen — the least they could do in return was serve as props for petty arguments. Not being killed or eaten wasn’t enough of a reward, really.

"Give me that thing, anyway,” she added. “The girl in there gave me Clarence’s digits."

Ruby threw it at her lap. “That a lead?” she asked, incredulous.

"There’s always time for my favouritest socially awkward seraph."

It rang through, so at least she could assume he hadn’t screened her. The voicemail was hard to make out, scratchy from interference; there was also heavy traffic in the background. Finally, that ridiculous, gravelly voice kicked in: _Hello. This is Ca—Clarence Milton. Leave your name and nightmare._

Straight up lifted that one from Dean-o. Typical.

"Hey there, feathers," she said, sing-song, sly grin breaking out. "Heard you’re calling yourself a hunter these days. Any time in that busy schedule for an old friend? Thought I could stop laying low. At least, alone. Pop up, will ya?"

It was after flipping the phone shut that Meg noticed the baleful stare of her compatriot. She’d turned, entirely, using her true eyes to keep track of the road and telekinesis to hold the steering wheel; she snatched the phone out of Meg’s hand.

"Milton?" she hissed.

"So?"

"So!" Ruby threw her hands up, made a disgusted noise. "What if he’s running around with Anna? She might come with him. You invited her into our laps!"

Her hair whipped against the seat as she shook her head, still muttering things like ‘ugh’ and ‘unbelievable.’ She put her hands back on the wheel, fingers too-tight.

"Anna being—?"

"The two-bit holy roller that dumped me,” she ground out, an answer as unsurprising as it was awkward.

Well, no angels decided to pop into their backseat. Bless.

Twenty minutes later they hit I-75, towards Lexington. She hmm’d, inquisitive, and Ruby replied, “If no one’s seen them, our best bet’s hitting Bobby Singer’s junkyard. Maybe we can rustle up something for a tracking spell. Might as well do that while we wait for him to call us back.”

Sioux Falls was over a thousand miles away. That said, she didn’t have high hopes for Cas to answer her booty call. Meg settled into the seat, folded her legs over the dash, and spent her time watching the scenery, and the way Ruby’s knuckles slowly eased. Call her uncultured, but she preferred the purr of the motor to Freddie Mercury.

Sometime after crossing Indianapolis —forgive the lack of specifics, the only landmark was yet another cornfield— Ruby switched on the radio, some top-40 station she sang along to, softly.

Uncultured she might be, and a devil besides, but Meg wasn’t a heathen. The few songs she knew the lyrics, she sang along. Impromptu karaoke was a vital part of roadtrips.

Pranks were, too. She wondered when she’d get the opportunity to glue Ruby’s hand to a beer bottle.

-

All sixteen hours from Gatlinburg to Sioux Falls passed without a single awkward backseat pop-in.

She still didn’t trust it, but teleportation-by-summoning seemed a much more sensible plan when her muscles were sore and complaining from sitting still too long. That, and she couldn’t help but think, with a touch of dread, that Abaddon would’ve preferred the demons spend those hours doing something productive.

The town was bigger than she remembered, though she couldn’t say she’d come often, or that she’d paid attention to the sights. On the other hand, Singer Salvage Yard was smaller than Meg’s memory said it was. Like the loss of its cranky old bastard owner took something away.

It was either something soppy like that, or the fact the place was burnt down.

As much as she wanted to think it was only the latter, Meg had to admit the place was timeless, in a grungy, junkyard sort of way. She half-expected the old coot’s mutt to attack her, again, even though she killed the foul thing a long time before its owner kicked the bucket.

“This’ a pleasant surprise,” she said, kicking an oil tin.

“It doesn’t take much. Just find something that had spit, skin or blood.”

Mostly, she found a whole lot of nothing, though there was a note, scrawled with the sort of ‘redrum’ shit a mad, blind toddler might plaster all over the walls, buried underneath some melted liqour bottles. Must’ve been Sam’s from his Satan Vision period.

“A note good enough?”

Ruby popped next to her, holding a purple toothbrush. That was Sam’s, too.

Meg remembered from when she possessed him, though she never meant to. For whatever reason, it stuck with her, all these years, that the too-cool-for-macho-posturing Sammy Winchester only allowed himself one ‘feminine’ colored object, a purple toothbrush. Jessica always thought jewel tones looked fetching on him. He was too embarrassed to wear the shirts, so she bought enough hipster scarves to tie up a yeti, even though they lived in temperate California.

Of course, Ruby knew this about him because they’d fucked.

Though she resisted commenting about slopping seconds, no one could stop her from thinking it. She wasn’t jealous —Ruby could have the floppy lug, for all she cared— but the idea the younger demon thought she knew him better affronted her.

Ruby dug out a map from her car and cast the spell on the trunk. All of the continental US burned except for Kansas.

"Think you’re losing your touch, there," said Meg, rubbing at the scorch marks.

"Abaddon told us their hideout’s warded. We’ve narrowed it down to a state, that’s a start."

"Needle in a dustbowl search. Sounds delightful.”

"Real ball of sunshine, you. There’s a joint downtown. Let’s get a bite to eat while we talk action plan."

-

The diner served excellent fries, apparently. As if Ruby’d come here often enough to form opinions. Maybe she had! During her year-long stint feigning goodness, she could’ve spent weeks trailing around this place. Maybe she took Sam out for some deep-fried artery-clogging goodness after lessons, for a treat.

Except, more likely, Sam would order the house salad. He’d need to feel that little bit clean after guzzling sulphur. No, it’d be Ruby with the burger and fries, slurping down a Coke, probably talking while she chewed, like Dean.

Once she saw it, she couldn’t unsee it. The similarities didn’t exactly stop there.

Oh ho ho, Sam, you incestuous pile of fucked-in-the-head. Meg wondered if it counted as an Oedipus Complex.

"Operation: needle in a dustbowl. Any ideas?" Ruby pushed the plate towards the middle of the table. "Try one. They’re like fried crack."

"Could stage a hunt, see if they bite."

She tried one. Ruby then laughed as Meg rubbed at her mouth and downed several mugs of coffee, said something about it being an acquired taste, as if the two of them were talking aged wine instead of junk food.

"Anyway," she added, switching from potato connoisseur mode to the more respectable topic of hunting people down, “Luring them out would be fine, if we wanted to draw them out, but we need inside the secret base. Besides, didn’t you wait months for them, that one time? You really think Abaddon’s that patient?"

Lucky them, they’d be the exhibits for Abaddon’s lesson to the new troops on drawing and quartering. A part of her said, reasonably, you’ve lived through worse. The rest of her still preferred to avoid it. She folded her hands under her chin, concentrating. Hmm.

“No one’s heard of them hunting. That doesn’t mean they never went out. If they went anywhere, it was local. We could check if any mysterious deaths show up dotted with fakey sounding FBI agents in the newspapers.”

The waitress handed Ruby a second plate with a little wink.

Ruby smiled back. The moment the waitress turned away, some asshole’s laptop blipped on to Meg’s side of the table. “Maybe your boyfriend will call us back and we can skip to the good parts.”

Not her boyfriend. Also, it wasn’t that surprising he didn’t respond. Now that he wasn’t crazy, or brainwashed, or tracking down relics only she could find, what use was some bitchy demon to an angel, even a fallen one? What use was she to Team Free Will? They didn’t even consider her a frenemy. She was delusional to have ever thought they could be friends, or anything beyond that.

This wasn’t a universe where things like that happened. Instead, there were people like Ruby —still chowing down, while Meg worked—, and assholes who made the password for the laptop ‘password.’ Sweet things weren’t real. They were only ever lies, or brought on by someone breaking their brain. They never lasted.

Fifteen Kansas newspapers ticked-off for freak deaths or gruesome accidents later, there still wasn’t a single classic rock shout-out, though there was some Homeland Security official named Granger involved with a string of disappearances outside Topeka. A hunter, certainly, but not her problem.

Hours passed. The sun set, and Ruby’s plates, left as unsubtle hints by the no longer flirty waitress, piled high enough to block the demon’s face. Her plan might still be faster than slapping pavement, but Meg was beginning to dread another minute of research, let alone the days that it could drag on through.  

It wasn’t her first or even her fiftieth choice, but there was still an option Meg hadn’t mentioned. If it worked, it’d make Solomon blush.

“Pop quiz,” she said, leaning around the plates. Strictly speaking, she didn’t need to, but lurching around a ceramic tower, her eyes bright, was fun. It also fit the topic. “Do angels need consent every time they possess someone?”

Ruby gnawed at her lip, broken open from the salt. “Probably not.”

"No deerstalker required, then! If at all possible, Lucifer would’ve gone back to his true vessel. We pretend we want to serve him, blammo. Instant access."

She looked down at Meg, vaguely pitying.

"He hates demons. You gotta know that by now."

"Correction: demons that aren’t useful. I was employee of the month the entire Apocalypse. He’d love to have me around, and if you bump helping Sam on your resume, he’d love you too. Secretary, maid, cannon fodder, emergency demon blood supply, etc. We’re great tools."

If anything, her spiel made Ruby even more uncomfortable. Meg thought, for a moment, she heard something like _you knew?_ , but that was impossible; no one pitied Meg, least of all someone who took three baths in her entire mortal life, and even if she had, they were going to do the proper thing and act like it never happened. She motioned for Ruby to reply.

"If we’re running with that, how do we reach him?"

"Prayer."

"What, ‘our Father, who’s not in heaven, holy-enough be thy name’?"

"Cute, but no. We need volunteers. Angels are hard-wired to respond to a human calling their name."

Not many people remained in the dining area. The only souls in the front were two boys, giving curfew what-for, shoveling food down their traps before their loaded itinerary of loitering and lurking. The waitress hid in the pantry, fortifying herself.

If needed, she could force them to say the words, but Meg was nothing if not a creature that relished the chance to fuck with some rubes.

She sauntered over to the little basement dwellers, let her hips sashay, made sure to lean too far back over the counter next to them, supine. The awful sweater fell down her shoulder. This close, she could smell the patchouli, but fluttered her eyelashes, daintily.

Back at the booth, Ruby covered her mouth, snickering.

"Hiya, boys,” she said, sultry. “Was wondering if you could help me win a bet."

Ruby waved.

They both wore hockey jerseys, but the one on the stool closer to Meg —let’s call him Mister Sparkles— paired his with a hawaiian shirt, the kind perfect for dubious screen-prints. Mister Sparkles, it seemed, had a thing for bikini babes and unicorns.

He caressed her elbow. Getting frisky there, shortstuff.

"What’s that?"

She could almost feel the grease spreading on her skin, but she leant into the touch. “Do you think the Devil can hear a person’s prayers?”

"Woah. That’s dark," said Chuckles the Lesser. Brilliant input.

"We’re a little dark." Ruby crossed her legs, sat prim. "What do you think? Would it work?"

Hot damn, was Meg’s elbow getting macked on. Maybe she should smoke out and let the two have a little alone time. Mister Sparkles shrugged. “Well, it stands to reason, don’t it? He was an angel.”

"That was Meg’s point. But how’re we gonna know? It’s as pointless as Schrodinger never opening the box. We can’t just say ‘hail satan’ and wait for the lights to flicker."

"What if the lights did flicker, though? Wouldn’t it be a sign? Let’s try. Whole nine yards. Say ‘Lucifer, give your servants a sign.’"

Just to sweeten the pot, she petted under his jersey, where it rode up, practically spoke into his mouth, “Say it with me, nice and slow.” Slow enough even an idiot could understand. “Lucifer — your servants ask for a sign. Let us help.”

To reward her for her troubles, the boy accidentally spat in her mouth. It was still worth it. At that moment, Meg exploded all the lights in the diner; only her new friend could see her eyes, oil-slick black, his reflection watching as he shat his pants in terror. Before bamfing out of there, she hissed some Latin, ominously. _Bye, elbow-fucker._

She still hadn’t stopped chortling to herself by the time Ruby rounded the corner.

"I started wailing that they killed my sister. Totally convinced them Satan dragged you to Hell.” Ruby shook, laughing, and if her tail wagged a little, Meg didn’t judge. It was cute. “Almost makes up for what a waste of time this was. That’s the second blocked call from you, Meg. Think you might need new friends."

Honestly, Meg hadn’t expected her plan to work; she shrugged, gamely.

Wings rustled behind her. The Winchester knot fell in two, and Lucifer stepped over it, with his borrowed, bowed legs.

"You must be Ruby. Hello, Meg."

Meg started to say “Father, we —” but he cut her off, with a level glance.

"You know how I feel about lying. Don’t waste your time. I heard you, when you first said my name," he rolled his shoulders, folded his hands together. "Let’s not make this awkward, shall we?"

A second later, they were inside a car station, filled with classic rides. Ruby’s mustang was the dingier, less-kept cousin, but fit in otherwise; a wash and some shellac, she’d not look out of place at all.

They were underground. Presumably, they weren’t in South Dakota anymore, either.

"I suggest you play along. Do so, and I’ll allow access to what you want. Try to cross me, or hurt the Winchesters, and you won’t be around long enough to regret it."

Ruby was the first to react, sneering. “Don’t be so condescending. We didn’t come to hurt them, and nothing’s worse than what you’re doing right now. Does Sammy know? It’d kill him!”

She vanished. The edges of fear crept into Meg, but what were the odds he killed Ruby? Talk about a waste of demon blood. Besides, if she’d angered him enough, her death would’ve been flashier. Chunkier.

“Dean will say you were looking for shelter. Don’t screw up.”

Nevermind the roadtrip or bitching about their feelings. Meg and Ruby’s entrance into the long-hidden Men of Letters bunker was the worst similarity to the Winchesters — solved their problem through a dash of actual work, tempered with dumb luck, coincidence, and grave self-endangerment.

When his body shifted from a tight, regal pose to something looser, jittery, and by the taste of things, afraid, she couldn’t even gloat. She couldn’t even crack a joke about the idiot sacrificing himself. She hated herself too much.

She needed a drink.

Luckily, so did Dean. Their first stop from the car station was the kitchen.


End file.
